Brief Thoughts on Law, Morality, & Religion
The topics of Law, Morality, & Religion are truly inseparable. In fact, each builds upon the foundation of the previous.
All law is moral. You cannot deny this reality. From traffic laws to robbery every law is based on morality. In our day and age people want to separate law from morality. You hear statements like, "You can't legislate morality!". This is utter nonsense. All law is the incarnation of morality. It is morally wrong to rob someone, that is the basis of laws against robbery. Of course there is some distinction between morality and law in that you cannot legislate all morality (think thought crimes). The only governments that attempt this are usually totalitarian and spy on their citizens.
All morality is religious. This is more readily denied in our day and age yet the denial holds no sway on the reality. Morality comes from somewhere. In fact, morality comes from one of two religion: Christianity or Humanism. Either we glean our morality from the word of God or we glean our morality from some other human-formulated system. Either God is God and His word prescribes morality or Man is God and his word prescribes morality.
In our society we like to think that we can avoid religion if we would like. However, even the mere suggestion that avoiding religion is possible is a religious claim. The reason is due to the fact that whenever someone is attempting to "avoid religion" they are doing so in order to avoid some moral or legal demand of religion. Their avoidance of religion is a religious move to set up a new moral code and law based not on "religion" but on their own religion of self.
We are very poorly taught in these areas and we could do for some deeper thought and reflection on some of the basest assertions made by our political and media talking heads.
Food for thought.
Michael